


Rinse, Respawn

by CoffioCake



Category: DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Kon gets some time with Superdad tho so that's nice, M/M, hints of Superbat but it's all background so meh, this got angsty really fast that's all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 10:45:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12188496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffioCake/pseuds/CoffioCake
Summary: Everything is always fine until it isn't. Kon has been keeping the demons at bay, but Tim's been wallowing in something dark for a while now, and it's finally dragging him under.





	Rinse, Respawn

**Author's Note:**

> "Rinse, Respawn" aka the fic in which nothing happens and yet EVERYTHING HAPPENS TOO MUCH

They were sitting in the middle of Tim’s room, eyes glued to the TV screen, fingers mashing buttons, buried in an ever-growing pile of empty chip bags and soda cans, and half-way through their third side-quest when Tim suddenly paused the game.

“Kon,” he said, pivoting and knocking over a half-full bottle of salsa with his knee, “I need to ask you something.”

Kon righted the bottle and licked his fingers. “Shoot.” 

“Are you… I mean, are you ever getting back together with M’gann?”

Kon squinted at him. “Uh… why?”

  
“Because. No reason. Answer the question.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Kon said, “but we’re both immortal. Forever is a long time. Shit happens.”  
“So, you think you’ll end up with her again.”

“Never say never,” Kon intoned with a sigh, “but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. That is, within the next few centuries. We would have to become entirely different people for that to even become a remote possibility again.”

“Hm,” said Tim, twisting away. 

“Why?”

“Just cause of Steph,” Tim said. “We broke up. Well, she dumped me.”

Kon grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

Kon waited in vain for Tim to restart their shoot-em-up.

“What about you and Wondergirl?” Tim asked instead.

“Huh?”

“You know,” Tim waggled his eyebrows. “The blonde. Wonder Woman’s apprentice.” This information elicited no reaction. “Cassie! I’m talking about Cassie! How is this not ringing any bells?”

“Ah,” said Kon, cottoning on. “But that wasn’t anything serious. And no. I mean, same answer. Immortals, shit happens, but not in this lifetime.”

“Not in this lifetime,” Tim repeated. Then, “Must be nice. Knowing you’ll have a chance later.”

Kon looked at him uneasily. 

“The longer you live, the more likely you are to hook up with them again, right? So, if you’re living forever, it’s an inevitability that you’ll end up married to her at some point. Probably to all of them.” A grin. “Have fun with that.” 

“That’s supposing the universe doesn’t collapse first.” 

Tim looked startled. “You really think you’ll live longer than the Earth?”

“I don’t need to breathe,” Kon said matter-of-factly, “so, yeah. Sun expands, Earth explodes, I’ll probably be miles away on another planet, an alien immigrant superhero saving other alien lifeforms on their own home planet. Rinse and repeat.”

Tim was studying the buttons on his controller, thumb running over plastic sheets and raised bumps, eyes blank. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

“I try not to think about it, honestly,” Kon said. He could feel the goosebumps crawling up his arms. He really wanted to get back to the game. “It’s depressing, imagining a time when I won’t have my best friend around anymore. It’s one of the reasons you need to figure out how to transfer your consciousness into a robot body so we can just hang out for all eternity or whatever.”

Tim froze.

“That’s… sweet, actually.”

Kon nudged him. “Don’t get sappy on me.”

“Me? Sappy?”

Kon pointed at the TV. “You cry literally every time that stupid dog dies in this game.”

“Because we can’t save him when he gets shot in a cutscene. They just make us watch!”

“It’s just a digital dog.”

  
“When you’ve wandered around a wasteland with Cujo for twenty-nine hours of gameplay, _he might as well be real_.”

“For the love of—“

Tim turned the game back on and shot friendly fire at Kon, just for kicks.

“Great. I’m dead now.”

“Once you’ve regenerated, get the motorcycle behind the warehouse and meet me at the clocktower.”

“You have a plan.” Kon couldn’t help but grin.

“I always have a plan,” Tim said airily. “Did you forget who you’re playing with?” 

They returned to the game, Kon digging around in one of the chip bags beside Tim. It was best to think about the here and now, and this moment in which he was gleefully speeding down a highway with eight cop cars on his tail. 

 

 

“Do you ever worry about the fact that we play the bad guys in literally every video game you own?” Kon asked. They had been out on patrol together from eight p.m. to twelve a.m. Tim had gotten hungry. Kon, who was always up for food, had agreed to a midnight snack, so they had decided to eat take-out pizza overlooking the Metropolis skyline from one of Wayne Tower’s monstrous gargoyles.

“Antisocial behavior in video games actually engenders more open, moral behavior in real life,” Tim said, half-distracted by a small grease stain on his belt. He started tackling it with a tiny napkin. “It’s a guilt thing. The more questionable your actions are in the game, the more likely you are to be good IRL.”

“So… when we’re playing video games… we’re actually contributing to our education as crime fighters and quality citizens.”

“I know where you’re going with this and, believe me, I’ve tried that argument on Bruce. Multiple times.”

“How could he shoot you down? It’s brilliant!”

“By reminding me that there is such a thing as ‘too much of a good thing’ and that prolonged sitting combined with general inactivity can actually be more harmful to your health than smoking.”

“Is that how most of your discussions go?” Kon said, cramming pizza crust in his mouth. The rest of his sentence was a garbled mess, though he attempted to enunciate, “One of you cites one behavioral study and the other comes back with different but equally boring paper as a counterargument?”

Luckily, along with Russian, French, and C++, Tim understood pizza-in-mouth. “Pretty much.”

“Sounds like hell.”

“It’s very educational, actually.”

“If you fucking cite a paper right now, I will fling you off this tower.”

Tim laughed at him. 

“What are your fights like?” he asked. “With Clark, I mean. You two just yell at each other?”

“St. Superman doesn’t yell,” Kon grumbled. “Whenever I challenge his authority, he just stands there, blinks a few times, and then says, ‘Uh… let me get back to you on that.’ I assume he flies off to ask for advice from Bruce and does whatever he suggests. Which means, technically, I’m being raised by the same rigorous academic studies as you are.”

“At least Clark’s trying,” Tim said reasonably. “Unlike before. Where he avoided you altogether.”

Kon shrugged. “I guess.”

“He’s just scared,” Tim insisted.

“Yeah,” said Kon angrily. “Cause next to him, I’m absolutely terrifying.”

He picked at the cheese on the pizza, appetite dwindling. 

“Hey,” said Tim. “So, Dick’s going to be back in town end of the week. Kaldur too. Wally wants to take you all out to a bar and get super wasted.” A pause. “They’re inviting you and Artemis and M’gann. You know, getting the whole team back together.”

Kon closed the lid on the pizza box. “I’m not going.”

“What?” Tim rounded on him. “Why not?”

_Because they’re twenty-two and I’m still sixteen._ “Alcohol doesn’t exactly do much for me.”

“Doesn’t do anything to Wally either,” Tim countered. “It’s mostly for the socializing anyway. I don’t even think Dick will drink; he kind of, you know, picked up good habits. From home.”

“What does that mean?”

“Bruce doesn’t drink any alcohol,” Tim said as if he were letting Kon in on a state secret. “Like, ever. All those full-to-the-brim champagne flutes he carries around at parties? Sparkling apple juice. He waters it down with Seltzer until he gets the perfect color. Then he just acts drunk and fake-passes out, usually in the arms of some woman who tells the others that Brucie Wayne is a lush who can’t get it up anymore.” He grimaced even as he grinned. 

“Your dad is crazy smart,” Kon said, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, well…” Tim shrugged. “Sometimes I think he’s just crazy. I can’t decide where the line is anymore, which I think means I’m going crazy too. Sometimes I think that’s why Dick left. It’s like we all inevitably get infected with Bruce’s mania.” He looked wistfully down at the street below where a mother was walking down the sidewalk with her daughter.They were holding hands. “But… I chose this, you know? _I_ looked for _him_. And I didn’t look for him because I look good in spandex or because I thought being a hero would make me popular: I knew, _best case_ , I would walk away with broken bones. I knew it would mean a double life, the kind where I could only be myself when I put the mask on. And even then, only around a handful of people who wear masks themselves—whom I therefore barely trust and who barely trust me.”

“ _I_ trust you,” Kon insisted. “Besides, it’s the same thing everywhere with anyone else: You wouldn’t be friends with people who don’t share your priorities or interests, even without the mask.”

“It just feels like we’re all insane,” Tim murmured. “Like we’ve all drunk the same Koolaid.”

“There’s no Koolaid,” Kon snapped.

Tim fumbled with his lines, coiling and uncoiling them nervously. “Did you know thecrime rate’s risen in Gotham since I became the new Robin?”

Kon sighed. “It’s risen everywhere. Metropolis too. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s like nothing we do is actually impacting anything.”

“Do you think the people you save don’t appreciate it?”

“It just makes me crazy!”

“What?”

“Like, we believe we’re all doing the right thing and we compliment each other on our good work but it isn’t doing anything—and we can’t stop doing it and talking about it and taking it seriously because if we do—-if we stop for a second—we’ll realize how useless—-“ He inhaled shallowly. “Sometimes I think… they should take all the criminals out of Arkham… and stick us in there instead. You know, the guards probably wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference—-”

Kon turned him around. “Tim,” he said firmly, “you’re not crazy.”

“How would you know?”

“Because…” Kon winced. “You just feel this way because… you care. You’re thoughtful. Being around you… it’s actually grounding—relaxing for me as opposed to, you know, being around the others. They’re all about ‘becoming stronger’ and ‘beating each other’ and whatnot. But you’re like Bruce; you just care about the work. Case by case. One at a time. It’s not about changing the world, it’s about changing what you can.” 

Tim’s eyes roved across his face, and then he lunged forward and pinned Kon against the gargoyle. Kon was too stunned to throw him off.

“I’m not crazy?” Tim demanded, wild-eyed.

“No!”

“No?” Tim hissed and lunged again.

His lips were a little dry but still soft. There was something desperate and hard in his kisses, though, that conflicted with that sensitivity, something hungry and sad and furious. It took a moment, but then Kon gently put a hand on the side of Tim’s face and leaned into the kiss. For some reason, that act of tenderness—or maybe it was Kon’s sudden determination to see how much of his tongue he could fit in Tim’s mouth—made Tim pull away. 

“What are you doing?”

Kon stared at him like he had gone crazy after all. “Well… you kissed me. So, I kissed you back.”

“You weren’t supposed to kiss me back.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

Tim looked lost. “I don’t know,” he said. His shoulders had started shaking. Kon became aware suddenly, horrifyingly, that there were tears in Tim’s eyes. “I thought—I thought—”

“You want to kiss me again?”

But Tim pulled further away. There was something about him, the look on his face, that made the hair on Kon’s arms stand on end. 

“Tim,” he said, “we don’t have to. I wasn’t—”

“What did it mean to you, when we kissed?” Tim said suddenly, loudly. “What did you feel? What were you thinking?”

Kon struggled for a minute then gave up. “You… felt sad,” he said finally. “I don’t want you to be.”

“You don’t want me to be sad,” Tim repeated. Then, “Is that all?”

“I liked it,” Kon added with a smile. “It’s… it felt nice. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

“What if we never do it again?”

Kon tried and failed to keep the confusion off his face. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he tried.

“No, what do you _think_ about that: Us never kissing. Are you mad? Sad? Happy?”

“Uh…” Kon choked.

“You don’t know,” Tim interpreted hollowly. He closed his eyes. “I kissed Cassie once,” he snapped. Kon felt something hot and cold shoot down his chest to his stomach. “We… You had just broken up with her. She was lonely. I felt bad. We made out, talked about you, made out some more. Then we went our separate ways.”

“Okay,” Kon said, feigning disinterest.

“What do you feel about that?”

“It’s fine,” he said gruffly. “It’s… “ He sighed through his nose. “What do you want from me here, Tim?”

“I don’t know,” Tim said, sounding just as frustrated. His fists were clenched so tight the leather of his gloves was creaking. “What do you want to do?”

Kon wanted to kiss Tim again, mostly because he had felt like there was something warm and gooey in his gut, spreading across his whole body. _Sex, sex, sex_ had been playing on repeat in his brain from the moment Tim had pinned him to the roof—but Tim was looking at Kon like he didn’t know who he was anymore. There was a part of Kon that knew that, if he initiated it, Tim would fold into him, and ten minutes from now, they would be going at it like Catholic rabbits on the top of Tim’s foster-father’s office building. But there was also that voice that spoke with Superman’s sternness, the voice that, day after day, started sounding more and more like a more adult version Kon’s own, telling him what he already knew: that Tim was upset and therefore in no position to engage with him on any deep emotional level—-and certainly not capable of agreeing to physical intimacy.

“Why don’t we… head back to the Batcave, call it an early night and… I don’t know… watch a movie,” Kon tried helpfully. “If you’re still feeling rough, we can skip school tomorrow, just goof off. You sound like you need a break.”

“Just… watch a movie,” Tim repeated, a very Damian-like sneer on his face. “That’s your solution?”

“Well—”

“Play hooky. Get in trouble with Bruce. Because that’s what I need, on top of everything else: More pressure.”

“I’m sorry—”

“You’re right about one thing, though: I am going home. Alone.”

He dove off the side of the building. For a full five seconds, Kon’s heart stopped, and then he saw Tim swing into the shadows of two neighboring skyscrapers and disappear into the distance.

 

 

Kon waited until Clark had changed out of his supersuit and flopped onto the couch before he said, “I have to ask you something.”

Clark jumped about a foot.

“It’s about Tim.”

“Okay…” Wariness already.

“He kissed me,” Kon began. “Wait, no, that’s not the relevant part. I mean, it’s a relevant part, but it’s not— It isn’t about that.” A breath. “I’m worried about him. He says… he says he feels like he’s crazy. And I don’t know what to do. I need you to help me.”

“Uh,” said Clark usefully, “can I get back to you on that? Because—“

“No.” Kon moved to stand across from him, arms akimbo. “No, I’m not asking you because I want you to run off and come back with some perfectly scripted answer tomorrow, I’m asking you because I need help from you now. Tonight. I can’t—I’m—“ He struggled for words. “I’m scared,” he finished lamely.

“Because Tim kissed you,” Clark tried, one eyebrow quirked.

“No.” Kon ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s not—“ He gave the best recap he could of what Tim had told him. When he finished, Clark looked less confused, more concerned.

“I should still tell Bruce,” he said, rising. “Tim is his son. He should know that there’s something wrong.”

“But what _is_ wrong?”

Clark grimaced. “It’s… well, it sounds like what we—our community—-all go through at one point or another. Comes in waves. Happens in police forces too, in the military, in intelligence circles… You see a lot of rough things, a lot of darkness, and you… You wind up disconnected from people who haven’t seen those things. Who don’t know. Who can’t understand…” He grimaced. “It’s hard to describe if you haven’t felt it before, but believe me, if you continue in this line of work, you will. It’s this despair—-this helplessness—that just breaks over you like a wave and, for a while, you think you’re drowning. You feel alone.You feel like nothing matters. There’s even a period where surviving hurts so much you wonder if it would be better to be dead—but it passes. You rise to the surface. You breathe. You continue, until the next wave hits.”

“But we don’t need to breathe,” Kon said, confused.

For a minute, Clark just looked at him. “I did, once,” he said finally.

Sometimes, Kon forgot that Clark was far more human than he was. Kon had more in common with Cassie and Wonder Woman than he did with Kara and Clark, at least when it came to stuff like this. For all he was half Luthor, he wasn’t… It was like there was this wall, this wide gap between him and humanity. Their struggles almost felt like actions in a video game: distant and reversible, like NPCs during one of his sidequests.

Except for Tim.

“I don’t care about waves or darkness or whatever,” Kon said. “Is Tim going to be okay?”

“If we get him help.” Clark was already pulling on his shoes and glancing around for his keys. He swiped them off the counter. “You’ll be okay for a few hours?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be back before you leave for school—probably. We’ll have breakfast together.”

Kon would have replied, but Clark supersped out of the apartment. 

 

 

He found Cassie leaning against the railing behind the high school with a couple of her friends. They were smoking, Cassie faking it rather unconvincingly, laughing at something one of them had said. Kon marched over to her.

“Can I talk to you?”

Her stupid friends made stupid cooing noises, but Cassie nodded straight-faced and separated from them, following Kon around the corner and then flying up to the roof which, without stairwell access, would be student free.

Cassie landed next to the skylight over the gym. “What’s up?”

“It’s about Tim,” Kon said. “Did you really kiss him?”

He regretted it the moment he said it. She cocked her head to the side. “Is that really why you asked me up here?”

“No,” he said hurriedly. “Actually… Have you noticed anything off about Tim?”

  
“You and I weren’t dating anymore,” Cassie reminded him, “when I kissed Tim.”

“Yeah, I know. It doesn’t matter. About—”

“Tim was lonely, I was lonely—”

“Why was Tim lonely?”

“Steph had dumped him.”

“Right,” said Kon. “So, the two of you lonely hearts met up and just… what… made out?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t.”

Cassie studied him for a minute, then shrugged. “He was lonely because Steph dumped him, but also because, well, he hadn’t seen you in a while.”

“We see each other all the time.”

“Not while you and I were dating,” Cassie countered.

“We weren’t dating,” Kon shot back. “Sex isn’t dating.”

Again, the wrong thing to say, but after a moment of staring off to the side, Cassie just shrugged. “Whatever. Tim was lonely because you spent more time with me than him.”

Things were adding up. “So, he kissed me because he was afraid to lose me.”

“He kissed you?”

“Did you two sleep together?” 

He really, really wished he could bite his tongue sometimes. Bite it clean off.

“No,” said Cassie.

“Really?”

“Really.” Cassie paused. “I offered, he wasn’t interested.”

That was… well, not unexpected, but… 

“I guess he must have been hung up on you then already,” Cassie mused, more to herself than to Kon.

“He’s not hung up on me.”

“Then why did he kiss you?”

“He didn’t want to,” Kon said. “Not really. When I kissed him back, he pulled away.”

Now Cassie gaped at him. _“You kissed him back?”_

“Yeah. Of course.”

“‘Of course’? Why?”

“Because he kissed me.”

“You kissed him because he kissed you.”

“Yeah.”

“So, if I kissed you right now, you’d kiss me back too.”

Kon took an involuntary step away from her. Cassie grinned.

“You know, when you brought up Tim and me, I thought maybe you were jealous of him. But you’re jealous of me… because I kissed him and he let me.”

“He’s going through something,” Kon said, more determined than he felt. “And I don’t know how to deal with it, so, I want you to go visit him. Talk to him. Make him feel better.”

“But what if we kiss again?” Cassie said slyly. “And what if… because he’s so lonely again… what if this time we _do_ go all the way?”

For a moment, Kon felt fire behind his eyes. “It won’t, but whatever.”

“‘Whatever’.” Cassie shook her head at him. “Why don’t you just talk to him yourself?”

“I don’t know anything about this stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“How to cheer him up. What to say.”

“Conner,” Cassie said in that voice she had used when they were hooking up, back when she had thought he was still fragile and worth coddling, “what the fuck does it matter?”

“Because the last time I opened my mouth, I fucking tanked,” came the bitter reply. Then a grimace. “Batman will deal with it. He knows how to handle everything.”

“You guys always rely on Batman,” Cassie said with an eye roll. “Like, I get that he’s stupid smart, but… I dunno… ever thought of trying to puzzle things out yourself? Helping the poor guy out? He’s not exactly a model of emotional maturity. He can’t take care of everyone all the time.”

“He’s Batman,” Kon said uncomprehendingly.

Cassie stared up at the sky as if imploring her gods. “I tried.” Distantly, the bell for fourth third period rang and Cassie rose off the roof. “That’s my cue.”

She left Kon scowling after her.

 

 

Kon had fourth period with Tim and had steeled himself for their first meeting since The Gargoyle Incident… But instead of shared awkwardness, he found himself sitting alone at their chemistry lab table with no texts on his phone and no explanation from anyone else in the class.

_Have you heard from Tim?_ he sent to Dick.

_I thought he was staying with you_ , was Dick’s reply. 

_He headed home last night_ , Kon sent back.

There was a pause during which Kon assumed Dick was texting Bruce. Thirty seconds later, the text came back: _Tim didn’t come home._

Then there were a flurry of comments—which got Kon kicked out of chemistry class—all about tracking down Tim. No one knew anything.

And, of course, Kon immediately had flashbacks to the worst week of his life: When Tim was kidnapped by the Joker. The plummeting feeling in his stomach and the cold shakes down his back felt eerily familiar. He found himself listening, extending his hearing as far as it would go, straining for—

There. Southside of Gotham. 

He didn’t even care if someone saw him; he took off at a dead sprint. 

 

 

The abandoned duplex with the boarded up windows and the ramshackle door sat squashed between too equally squalid apartments. The inside was as decrepit as the exterior with a giant hole gaping in the middle of the foyer and a moldering staircase leading up to a sagging second floor. Kon could smell something growing in the kitchen sink around the corner and something else festering in the downstairs bathroom. As he ascended the creaky stairs, clutching the trembling handrail, he saw a rat scurry into the living room. 

Tim was sitting on a scruffy mattress in the corner of a bedroom that still had posters of old sci-fi movies pinned to the peeling walls. 

“Yours?” Kon said, surveying Tim from the doorway. Tim made no indication that he heard. “It’s nice. Or, well, I can imagine it once was. Not enough shelf space for all your books, though. Did you just stack them by your bed?”

“Before Bruce’s unlimited coffers, I walked to the library. It’s only four blocks away,” Tim said. “Or it was. It’s been abandoned too. This whole part of town… They’re tearing it down.”

“Oh,” said Kon. “Is… I mean, can’t Bruce buy it—?”

“He tried, but the company board and the shareholders wouldn’t go for it,” Tim said. “There’s nothing historical enough to be worth preserving here. Just a bunch of homes some poor people used to live in and an abandoned library built in the seventies.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Kon could think to say. Slowly, he sat down in the doorjamb.

“It's not your fault.” Tim’s voice sounded thin. He was fiddling with the frayed edges of the dirty mattress. “It’s nobody’s fault. That’s just life. You can’t save everything.”

“At least this isn’t a person,” Kon tried. “There’s… I mean… There are memories here, but you can make new ones. With your parents. After all, they’re still alive… just… in another state under witness protection.”

“We split up five years ago,” Tim said. “To the day. And I still haven’t brought the guy who almost killed them to justice. I still can’t see them.”

And here it was: another moment where Kon didn’t know what to say. His parents, after all, consisted of a megalomaniacal genius and a clueless, well-meaning superhero. Neither knew what the heck to do with him, and there was only one of them with whom Kon had any desire to forge a long-lasting relationship. 

“Look,” Kon said. “You’ve, what, been working on your parents’ case for five years, right?”

“Off and on.”

“‘Off’ only when you had other people who needed more immediate saving,” Kon chided. “‘On’ the rest of the time.”

“Except not at all,” Tim whispered. “I play a lot of video games. And I… I goof off a lot when I get bored at school. I read books that have nothing to do with criminology. Or I’ll take whole evenings off to watch movies with you or… or just hang out… just… just _waste time_ …” There was that desperate tone again. Kon scrabbled around in his brain for something to say. Then, he remembered an article that had caught his eye in _The Daily Planet_ while he was on the hunt for Clark’s weekly puff piece.

“You know, it’s actually been proven that stepping away from a problem and distracting your conscious brain with inane tasks, giving it a rest, can free up your subconscious to make connections on its own, thus allowing you to draw conclusions faster than if you had simply worked on a case without rest or diversion from dusk till dawn.”

For a minute, there was no discernible reaction. Then Tim raised his head.

“Proven where?”

“I'll have to ask Clark to find the article. It was in _The Planet_ ’s Business section. Or was it Health?” Kon shrugged. “I’ll get you a citation later. But my point is: by taking breaks, you were actually helping your brain solve the case. You may not have cracked it yet, but by playing video games, spending time with your friends, and reading comic books—even by taking naps—you have actually brought yourself closer to solving your parents’ attempted murder than if you had worked on their case for five years with no rest, no breaks, and no friends.”

Tim looked down at his hands. “I thought… I thought you were going to say something like, ‘Everybody needs a break, Tim. Don’t be so hard on yourself.’”

“That too,” said Kon. “But… I know you. Even when we’re playing some stupid video game, your brain is going nine-hundred miles a minute. So, I have no doubt that, even while you were consciously goofing off, your subconscious probably couldn’t help put metaphorical jigsaw puzzles together. Or something.”

When Tim looked up at Kon, his eyes were wet. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

A pause. 

“You know, you don’t have to sit on the floor,” Tim added. “You can join me here.”

“Thanks. I’m not going to get bed bugs, am I?” Kon wrinkled his nose. “Cause Clark will kill me.”

Tim rolled his eyes.

Kon crossed the room and sank to his knees in front of Tim. “I mean it, though.”

“About the bedbugs?”

“About you being able to tell me things anytime. I… I put my foot in my mouth, like, always, but, you know, I do want to—”

Tim leaned over and kissed him again. Kon had the presence of mind not to immediately maul him. He settled instead on letting Tim explore his mouth and bite his lower lip. After what felt like a heartbeat and a year, Tim pulled away.

“Huh,” he said. 

“What?”

“I was expecting you to get all… I don’t know… _grabby_.”

“What?”

“I know what I’m getting into,” Tim said seriously. “Cassie kisses and tells.”

Kon, cheeks burning, stared down at Tim’s hand before taking it in both of his. “Listen,” he said, “this isn’t like that. For me. Not this time. I—“

“I’m not like other girls?”

“You’re not a girl.”

“Thanks for noticing.”

“You’re not immortal,” Kon insisted loudly. “I… I have to get this right. If I don’t…” He paused, felt the weight of what he wasn’t saying sink over both of them, suffuse them, and, finally, disperse in the very air they breathed.

“Only in this lifetime,” Tim exhaled. It seemed to reverberate off the walls.

They sat in the growing dark until, finally, there was nothing to see by but the moon, which was barely a sliver through the boards over the broken glass in the window.

“I wouldn’t mind you getting grabby,” Tim said suddenly, too loud in the stillness. 

Kon snorted. “Trust me; you’d mind.”

“Trust _me_ : I think you should get a little grabby, sometimes.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Tim looked at him significantly. “For instance, you could get a little grabby right now.”

The penny dropped. 

Kon touched his pockets and pulled out nothing but lint. “I mean, I’m not really equipped for… uh…”

“A home run,” Tim said dryly. “Well, third base would be entirely acceptable.” He cleared his throat,voice a little high. “And, um, encouraged.”

It was like a ripple that skirted across his skin, then settled warm and sickly sweet deep in his gut. “Encouraged, huh?”

Kon could hear Tim’s elevated heartbeat, feel the hot breath on his body, sense the trickle of sweat sliding down the curve of his back… Every reaction seemed hyper-stimulating, every sensation like a revelation, more real than real. He wanted to press his ear to Tim’s chest, feel the heart beating against his cheek, listen to that breath stir his hair, lick the sweat offTim’s skin… Slowly, trembling with his own disbelieving anticipation, Kon reached out and placed a hand on Tim’s neck, just below his jaw. 

Beneath his fingers, Tim shuddered. And smiled.

 

 

“You were missing for over thirty-six hours,” Bruce said, voice low. “Do you have any idea how worried we were?”

“I wasn’t alone,” Tim said. “Conner was with me.”

“And didn’t bring you back,” Bruce said, rounding on Kon who had been hiding unsuccessfully behind the robot T-Rex’s hind-leg. They always amazed him, all the weird crap in the Batcave.

“I didn’t want to go back just yet,” Tim said in a rush. “I… I just wanted to talk. We had a good conversation. It was very productive.”

Bruce turned to look at him, eyes narrowing at the pink flush across Tim’s cheeks and at the way his eyes darted this way and that, determined neither to look at Kon nor at Bruce directly. For his part, Kon couldn’t take his eyes off Tim, off his long lashes, his narrow wrists, or the bruise peeking over the edge of Tim’s collar, the one that Kon had sucked deep into the skin…

“I see,” came Bruce’s icy reply. He was glaring at Kon. “Tim, bed. I have a Kryptonian to talk to.”

Now Tim looked genuinely terrified.

“Bru—“

“Bed. Now.”

The glance Tim paid Kon was the look of a wife leaving her husband at the gallows. Kon offered an indifferent shrug. 

Bruce stood with his hands clasped behind his back for several minutes after Tim had left before he said in a completely different voice, “What are you _doing_ , Kon?”

Kon didn’t even blink. “Dating Tim.”

“You're going to ruin this partnership,” Bruce snapped. “You two are, as is, an efficient team: You get along, you coordinate well, you communicate—”

“We’re best friends,” said Kon. "Kissing each other... a lot... isn't going to change that."

“Sex can ruin the strongest of relationships." Bruce pushed back his cowl; Kon saw the pained expression on his face. “You think it can’t because it’s just some physical exertion and your emotions are on another plane, but that’s not how your body works. _I_ know. From _experience._ Your emotions are very tangible, and they have real, recognizable effects on your physical body, like making you want to leave a _visible hickey_ on your partner’s _neck_ —“

“I’m not saying we’re _just_ friends,” Kon clarified, “I’m saying we’re _best_ friends. I know we’re just kids. Heck, I’m barely six years old, for all I look eternally sixteen.” His face fell a little. “Tim may… Actually, he definitely will decide that a few years from now, it’s just too weird to be with me when I… can’t age with him. Or maybe it'll be when he gets into his late twenties… early thirties… and he wakes up and realizes he's still dating a teenager… He’ll say he wants someone to grow old with. Like Steph. Like… anyone else.” His jaw felt tight. “Anyway, that’s…that’s how it is. I can’t have him forever. And even if I could have him for his whole life, I’d still outlive him an outrageous number of millennia. So. I’ll take this.” He looked at Bruce. “If Tim wants me, I’ll take this. It’ll be more than enough.” 

It occurred to Kon that he was crying only after Batman hugged him. Such a strange sensation, to be held tenderly against a suit that was meant to repel all physical contact. The gauntlets, designed to punch and maim and protect their wearer, were cradling Kon's head and patting him on the back. It was somehow easy to cry on the armored shoulder, which muffled sounds even if it did nothing to absorb his tears. 

 

 

Kon was on the couch at Clark’s apartment when Superman came in through the window. 

“Hey,” Clark said, overly-cheerful. He gave Kon finger guns.

Kon gave him a pained expression. “Bruce told you about Tim and me.”

“Ah… yes.”

“I’m not changing my mind.”

“I… I wasn’t going to make you,” said Clark. “I just… I just wanted to say that I will support you. I think what you’re doing is… well, I hope it makes you happy.”

“It won’t, short-term. I’ll probably regret it when it’s over—-for centuries—possibly millennia—but I think very, very longterm, I’ll be as glad as I am right now.”

Clark flopped down onto the couch. “You know,” he said, “I actually… This is the first time I’ve been to see Bruce in a long time.”

“What are you talking about.” Kon rolled his eyes. “You see him every other day, whenever I ask you anything that would involve real parenting—“

Clark flinched. “I uh… I actually go to the library.”

Kon stared at him. “What?”

“Sometimes I ask my mom too,” Clark continued. “I mean, that’s what I do when I don’t know something: I look it up or I ask an expert. But… if there’s one thing parenting books and motherly advice have taught me, it’s that nobody actually _knows_ how to raise a kid… so…”

“So… you’ve decided to wing it?”

“More or less,” said Clark, grinning. “And in the spirit of autonomous parenting, I am grounding you for… a month… for… not texting or calling anyone to tell them you had found Tim. Side-parenting-note: I thought you went missing too and I got worried. So, starting from now on, you also check in with me every time you get out of school just to tell me you’re on your way home, when you get home, and where you’re going at all times. You can go wherever you want—I mean, no elephant graveyards, if you know what I mean—but just tell me so I know you haven’t been kidnapped.”

“Right,” said Kon. Then, “Uh, what exactly does being grounded mean?”

“No internet, television, comic books, movies—”

“I need the internet for school.”

“Alright. Internet for school. But that’s it for the next month. And no going out after curfew.”

“What’s my curfew?”

“Ah,” said Clark and seemed to harken back to his distant past. “Right. Ten p.m.”

“But what about patrolling the border between Metropolis and Gotham with Tim? I can’t just leave him out there alone.”

“Fine. Patrolling with Tim until two a.m., but then you come straight back here. And not on school nights. And you finish your homework before bed; no more super speeding through it in the morning.”

“Fine, fine, fine.”

They looked at each other and Kon found himself grinning. Clark seemed poised to ruffle his hair but then settled an arm around Kon's shoulders instead.

“What’s going to happen to Tim?” Kon asked.

“Knowing Bruce, he’s probably grounded for a year,” Clark deadpanned. “And he’ll probably have mandatory sessions with Bruce’s therapist. That’s Dinah, by the way. Black Canary. You remember her from early training.”

Kon leaned back. “I’m just glad Tim’s getting help.” Then his expression turned thoughtful. He jerked upright, turned and poked Clark in the chest. “You’re the one Bruce was talking about!”

“Talking about in what context?”

“The colleague-friend relationship he ruined because he thought he could keep emotions out of sex,” Kon said bluntly. 

Clark blushed a deeper red than Tim ever had. It stretched from his chin to the roots of his hair. “That… That rumor about the two of us has been floating around the Watchtower long before you were even born. You shouldn’t give credence to hearsay.”

“Bruce still loves you, by the way.” Kon grinned. “I heard it in his heartbeat. I think… I think if you went to him now after I told him how I feel about Tim and how even though I know long-term things might not work out, how I want to be with him anyway…” He gave Clark a pointed look. 

For a minute, Superman continued to sit like a statue carved into the cushions… Suddenly, he launched himself upright and practically sprinted out of the apartment.

“Go-to-bed-at-ten,” he hissed before he slammed the front door. 


End file.
